Mary Morris as Abbie and Walter Huston as Eben
Premiere of Desire Under the Elms 1924

LEST WE FORGET  MARY MORRIS
(June 24, 1895 - Jan. 16, 1970)

She was encouraged in her acting aspirations by her mother who took her to a dinner of the Millenium Society at which she met the guests of honor
Minnie Maddern Fiske and George Arliss.  (In later years she was to appear with Arliss in Alexander Hamilton.   

While a student at Radcliffe, she studied Shakespeare with George Kittredge and participated in George Pierce Baker's 47 Workshop.
She left Radcliffe in 1915 and went to New York, where, with support from her parents, she made the rounds of theatrical agencies. A letter of introduction from Baker won her a place with the Washington Square Players, where she served as "understudy, prop girl, and general factotum". She made her New York debut with this group in 1916, playing the farm wife in Lewis Beach's The Clod and winning recognition from the critics.  Following Baker's advice, she then spent two years in stock companies including one season in Northampton, Massachusetts, with Jessie Bonstelle's municipally supported theatre. In 1918 she went on tour with George Arliss in Alexander Hamilton. "I played a small part, and understudied two leads, " she remembered. "Mr. Arliss sometimes conducted understudy rehearsals which was of great benefit to us younger players."

     During World War 1 she acted in a series of one-act plays in the military camps around New York.
In 1924 she joined the Provincetown Theatre (then under the direction of Robert Edmond Jones, Eugene O'Neill, and Kenneth Macgowan.) where she played the Dark Lady in August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata and Gertrude in Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion. During this same year she was cast to play Abbie Putnam opposite Walter Huston in Desire Under the Elms. In later years she wrote, "I never worked so hard as at rehearsals of Desire Under the Elms. It was eight hours a day going into the psychology of the characters and no play has ever seemed difficult to me since then." O'Neill cast her for the role of Abbie Putnam without having read her for the part. In a letter to Kenneth Macgowan he wrote, "The important thing is her whole attitude and conception and there she's O.K."

     Other noteworthy roles included Dorimene in Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory production of
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; Barbara in The Cross Roads directed by Guthrie McClintic. In 1931 she played Mrs. Connelly in the Group Theatre's production of Paul Green's House of Connelly under the direction of Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford.  She also acted with Lillian Gish in a Central City, Colorado revival of Camille.  One of her most famous roles was the sinister Victoria Van Brett in the 1933 production of Elizabeth McFadden's Double Door.   She also starred in the film version.
The New York Times critic reported: "Miss Morris's highly effective performance as the mad Victoria is a model of up-to-date witchcraft."

In 1939 she was appointed assistant professor of drama at the Carnegie Institute's School of Fine Arts, but she continued to perform by giving readings and appearing in summer theatres throughout the country. She was granted leave in 1951 to play the Nurse in Judith Anderson's Medea at the International Theatre Festival in Berlin and in 1956 to play Anna in
Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country with Uta Hagen.
She had written:  "It is fine to be in a place so liberal that they will let me get away to act once in a while."

As a teacher and director of young actors, Mary Morris relied on her years of training in professional theatre while gaining experience in her new role of drama professor.  In a 1941 interview she said, "Teaching is new to me and I am unacademic, but I know the greatest joy a teacher can have is to find ability in a student. . .As for criticizing the work of the students, I have found that they will take any amount of adverse comment if you first let them understand that you believe in them and want to help them."
                           Always stressing the important of solid training and experience, she felt the demise of stock companies provided a hardship for young actors and advised her students not to head for New York but to work in any group that is putting on plays. "I am a believer in little theatres, experimental theatre, and experimental acting groups as substitutes for the stock company."

                          In both professional and educational settings, she sought to understand and practice the powers of that art.  In the midst of World War ll she wrote, "Now, if ever, is the time for the theatre, along with all the other great arts which serve life, to make itself of worth and significance to the world. Theatre can speak to mankind as no other art can speak, most directly, most movingly. People are hungry for the word that illumines, the idea that inspires, the emotion that warms and strengthens. Now is the time for all to go forward who believe in the theatre as a place of revelation and communication.
(Theatre Arts, July 1941).

Resource:  Notable Women in the American Theatre. 1989.  Judith L. Stephens